COBDEN found himself in the lane, turned away from the _maidan_, his hands lifted and clenched. From behind still came the sounds of a ship going down--all but down, the firing ceased. In front of him, the _sepoys_ were running low as if to escape. It made him think of ball players leaving the field in the summer dusk after a game, running through the crowd to the clubhouse. The armored cars were backing out before him. “... Of course,” he kept telling himself, “it had to come this way--end of the old story, the beginning of the story of the age. This isn’t an English-Indian story. It’s a story of all the world.” Only natives were about him--ashen-lipped, muttering, frightened, dazed. He continued through the _kucha_, following the armored cars. He must get to the hotel. He had something to write, copy to file. But this delusion did not carry him far, before its absurdity struck home. The outer world would never hear of this story, until it leaked through by letter or word of mouth. The cables had been tight before. They would be drum-tight now. Vaguely and dully he realized that all things were changed for him for all time. The reporter in his makeup that had blithely set out for Jallianwalla Bagh was done for, all aloofness of the spectator gone--the little poise of ego which had carried him so well and so long, so far as associations with men went, up and down the world until this hour--that ego poise was leveled and smeared. Amritsar’s public square--the massacre in the _maidan_ had cloven him, and into the opening all India had rushed. The face of the hooked man came back to him--hard unto silliness, the English stare against the sinking city. He had overtaken the nearest of the armored cars. He looked upon them strangely, their sleek integration. They had not been needed; India had died and been born again without them. Something similar had happened in himself. No casual reporter now--one living emotion, rather--one fire, one fury, a burning of unqualified pity in every cell that held his life. The driver of his carriage hailed him. Cobden lifted his hand in return, but halted. Suddenly he realized that he didn’t want to go back to the _Golden Temple Inn_. The thing alive in him now was bigger than a story to be written, bigger than the finding of a free cable, which was not in India. He paid the driver and stemmed his way back against the people that thronged the lane. He knew now that he must keep his mouth shut in an altogether different way; that a new life, terrible in its potency, had seized upon him, was somehow being born in his flesh and brain. He must hold still--hold still. “Sixteen hundred rounds in ten minutes,” an English voice reiterated.